Page 53 of Wings of Destruction

If I wasn’t running wild and climbing trees, I had a book on my lap. I’ve seen more nonfiction than most and I’ve never heard about a book like this before.

“Novels on battle formation are dangerous topics for the general populace, eh?” I say out loud, the familiar anger flaring up. “Is that why you’ve not distributed it, King Lochlain? Or has your General got you so well trained you jump when he snaps his fingers?”

My lips round.

Of course, because the monarchy wouldn’t want its opponents knowing more than the King. And the General… Ether forbid anyone stand against him successfully.

There are several scrawled notes in the book’s margins in swirling ink, along with some hasty sketches of dragon wings.

I twist a stray piece of red hair around my finger, scouring. The binding of the feather duster adds unnecessary weight to my left hand and I pry the loop away from my skin. Let the cursed thing fall to the side of my crossed leg.

Illonia Whyte wasn’t the type of parent to read to her children. She left us just enough freedom to search on our own terms and our tutors handled the rest.

She never would have curled up on our beds like my father had, reading fiction pieces in strange voices until his daughters lost themselves to the tales.

“Never stop learning,” Michael Whyte had whispered to both me and Elspeth, the memory a lifetime ago. “Never stop searching for the truth. Your mind is your greatest weapon, my darlings.”

I wonder now if the heaviness that sometimes crept into his voice had something to do with his own thirst for knowledge. Or maybe he battled a guilty conscience after bartering his service to⁠—

I flip forward to the chapter on unicorns and stop, losing my breath entirely. The rider depicted in the illustration is done in black and white but the image is heartbreakingly familiar. It doesn’t matter that the rider is male and the unicorn of indeterminable sex.

It’s my mother all over again.

The familiarity is everywhere, in the proud bearing, the way the rider’s shoulders are thrown back and their armor gleaming in an invisible sun. It’s in the proud yet stern unicorn’s expression.

Yup, I’m gonna cry.

The first prick of emotional distress leaves me breathless, my fingers tangling in my hair and pulling like I’ll somehow be able to take those terrible thoughts out of my head and dispose of them somewhere else.

But they aren’t going anywhere.

This book might have made a difference in my mother’s battle plans the day of the attack.

I know we were lucky enough to be forewarned of Ryson’s arrival but if she’d known of some of these tactics, we could have made a better plan. Even if it meant retreat.

I scan blurry eyes across the page. The information won’t do me any good now. Those days are gone and the battle in question already lost. I’m punishing myself by reading. Hurting myself even more by trying to learn exactly what might have helped my mother and the other warriors.

Although I’m not sure anything would have been sufficient to turn the tide against a dragon the size of the white monstrosity I’d seen.

“Cursed dragons,” I mutter.

As powerful as they are, if their riders are corrupted, then it stands to reason the dragons are as well. At least on some level.

Kieran and his cousin had said something about being traitors and trying to cheat the crown when they’d first ambushed me in the cave. We’d done nothing wrong.

Our village kept out of politics. Illonia made it a point after we lost our father to Ryson and his ridiculous cause.

They just had dragons.

Knowing this information is out there does nothing to ease the anger inside of me. It rises, easily explained and centered on the General and his pale terror of a dragon. On the redheaded king with his crown granting him the power over other people’s lives.

Nothing erases the memory of my last conversation with my mother and my regret. I should have hugged her closer. I should have done a lot of things differently rather than acting like a spoiled and stubborn brat. A rattling sigh scrapes its way up my throat and dispels the fluttering of my irregular heartbeat.

I trail the pad of my index finger along the spine and a smile pulls free when I reach the next chapter.

“Someone has been busy. Haven’t they?”

The book’s owner wrote in the margins. Scattered throughout the book, I find, are notes on some of the formations. There are questions regarding several assumptions the original author made, even a few passages marked for later inspection.